Red Head
by The Living Hobnail
Summary: Misery is all Izzy has ever known and ever will, or that is, until she dies, and starts her new Life. COMPLETED, So enjoy....
1. Chapter 1

Isabelle looked at her reflection miserably. Her long, curly orange to red hair dripping in front of her, her green eyes filled with frightened tears. Her white skin was tinged with red blood showing through the gigantic tears in her dress.

"You stupid bitch!" her drunken husband screamed slurrily at her while kicking her curled up bleeding, hurting form. "Can't even make me a damn meal! I slave away at the mines and come home to slop like this?" He gave her a final kick and curse before staggering out of the room drunkenly. Isabelle lay dully on the floor, no thoughts coming to her mind, no thoughts leaving, just one big, blank, silence. Her body was numb with pain, and her breathing was ragged and shaky. She couldn't see anything except for the whiteness, and couldn't hear anything. It wasn't that she was dead or dying, but instead, she was going into herself, just for a little while. When she came out again, she hobbled herself up, brushed off her brown dress, and fixed her hair. There was no light shining through the window, only the dark night came through, covering the tiny hut in gloom. Her husband, Leopold, was still not home. Whenever she thought of Leopold, fear struck her through her heart. When Isabelle and Leopold first met a year prior to that day, it was because of their arranged marriage, and the first time they met was on their wedding day. He was the son of a landlord, and she was a poor farmer's daughter. It all seemed the way she expected marriage to be like for the first few days; husband goes to work, wife stays at home taking care of the house and cooking, husband comes home and the two eat dinner together before making love. However, after a few days, the drink came out, and Leopold was virtually always drunk or with a wicked hangover, and he would beat her whenever she even voiced her opinion on anything, or even spoke. He threatened to kill her if she ever had any more contact with her family or with friends. So, here she was, broken down in spirit and mind, wishing so desperately for escape that she became catatonic whenever she felt that she couldn't deal with the situation, which was quite often.

By the time she was done cleaning the house from Leopold's anger, she went to straw bed, feeling insecure and frightened. Shortly afterwards, the front door smashed open and Leopold came tripping towards the bed and fell down on top of her.

"Come 'ere you." He mumbled angrily at her while lifting up her tattered dressing gown and pulling off his trousers.

"Please don't Leopold, please," Isabelle whispered in a frightened voice to her husband, who cut her off with a hard slap across the face.

"Shut your trap whore." He growled at her as she struggled and strived to get him away from her and pull down her dress. After a few moments of strained grunts from Leopold, he entered her roughly, ignoring the sobs and struggles from his emaciated, broken-down young wife, who was not yet eighteen. He slapped her and, at one point, throttled her, before scratching her ruthlessly. He swore and threatened, cursed and mumbled, until he received his share of the orgasm, and rolled over, passed out from the drink. Isabelle rolled off of the bed sobbing silently yet uncontrollably, hoping desperately that Leopold would die, or divorce her, or run away with another. She crawled over to the window and quietly begged the darkness to take him away from her, to let her live in peace once more, without fear for her life or others.

The next day followed the same routine, the beatings, the verbal abuse, the black mail, the rape, until, of course the night came, and Leopold went out for more liquor. Trembling, Isabelle grabbed a satchel and put some of her folded clothes inside it along with Leopold's drink money and a loaf of moldy bread. She brushed her hair and put it neatly on top of her head, feeling strong and courageous, she walked out of the hut and down the cobblestone road to the town's only bar. She opened the swinging door tentatively, and then, seeing her husband, walked in more boldly and straight towards him. Rapping him sharply on the shoulder, she spoke;

"I'm leaving you Leopold, I'm sick of the abuse and violation from you, my drunk of a husband. If you ever step within a mile of me, I'll have you hunted down and killed like the cur you are."

At this, the whole bar had gone silent, and all eyes were on Leopold and his wife, both of whom, were staring each other in the eye. Leopold's face had flushed beet red, and his hands were clenched, a sign of upcoming anger. "Goodbye Leopold, I'm no longer your wife." She concluded, and walked briskly out of the bar. Leopold roared with rage and snapped up, his chair falling down behind him, but just as he tried to pull the door open and follow Isabelle, a few of the on-lookers pulled him back, laughing drunkenly. Leopold ran free of their grip and ran out of the bar roaring cussing with rage.

Isabelle looked nervously behind her as she heard a bellow full of wrath behind her from the town. Quickening up her pace, she hurried down the beaten dirt path, hoping desperately that the howl was not from Leopold. Soon, a twig snapped behind her and Isabelle whipped around to see a figure running toward her from far away in the darkness. She could hear the figure's heavy breathing, and the closer he got, the clearer his yells became.

"You ungrateful whore! You pile of shit! How dare you leave me!"

Isabelle's eyes widened with horror as she realized he was Leopold coming to get her. She whizzed around and ran faster than she had ever run before down the empty, shadowy trail. Leopold seemed to get farther behind the faster she ran, until of course, she realized that he was not running after her at all. In fact, when she stopped running to catch her breath and pull the rest of her hair off of the ragged bun on her head, she noticed that she heard no noise at all from his direction, or in front of her or beside her or anywhere at all. There were no crickets, no owls, no people, and nothing else except for one loud scream from Leopold piercing the night. Isabelle found herself creeping off the path into the direction where the dying scream of Leopold's was heard. She slinked behind some ferns and pulled them silently apart to spy upon Leopold, but serenely wished she had kept on running when she saw what lay ahead.

A young man accompanied by a middle-aged one were tearing Leopold's neck apart with their teeth and were slowly lapping up the thick, red blood flowing quickly out of the wound. Leopold was making choking noises and struggling feebly, his eyes bulging out of his sockets with terror and pain. Suddenly, the older male tore Leopold's eyeball out of his socket. Isabelle gasped and fell over onto her backside with shock and repulsion. The two men's heads snapped up and the older one got up and walked towards the bushes after telling the younger man to continue. The older man came closer to the bushes, his bottom half of his face covered in fresh, wet, blood. Isabelle scurried away, still looking at the figure as he threw apart the bushes, then, after looking at her for a split second, pounced on her. The last thing Isabelle remembered was screaming as loudly as she possibly could, feeling sure it would be her last breath, then a sharp pain in her head.

The next thing she knew, she was lying down on a large, finely carved bed filled with rich linen and sheets, and she was wearing her same dress as the previous night. It was dark, and only light was the glow of several torches lit the large cavern she was in. She slowly raised herself up, and clutched her head as it suddenly felt like it was a large stone, with a sharp pain rising through the base to her forehead. She groaned slightly as she forced herself up, and swung her legs over to the side of the bed. Her body felt like lead, and the whole room spun as she pulled herself up using the bed as a support. The glow from the fires hurt her eyes for a second before they adjusted to the light. Night and day were the same in that cavern. It was quite disorienting to not see the sun, or the moon, or whatever the time was, it was not there. The events of the previous night flashed back to her, making her hope desperately it was all a dream, and someone had saw Leopold chasing after her and saved her when she was knocked unconscious or some other hopeful wish she was forming in her head.

She stood there, leaning on the bed posts for some time before she heard a soft whirring of a cloak.

"Your troubles are over." A man's voice from behind her announced in a friendly tone. She whirred around to see a tall middle-aged man with dark brown hair and spectacles, smiling softly at her. Something about him seemed familiar to Isabelle….

"Come, sit." He gestured toward the end of the bed, where he sat and she followed suit, his eyes and voice slightly hypnotizing. "We have much to talk about."

"Is my husband dead?" she asked him quietly, for fear Leopold might be lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce. The man chuckled.

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"How do you know?"

"Why, my dear, I killed him, along with David. Surely you remember? I feared you were severely injured, seeing as you have been unconscious for several nights now."

Isabelle stood up, her eyes wide with shock, and backed away into the shadows, right into a large object. She jumped and whizzed around to face it, seeing the young man from the last encounter, smiling toothily, and Isabelle noticed with horror that he had two sharp fangs where his eye teeth were supposed to be. She backed up hurriedly, her eyes wide, and turned around to run, but bumped into the older creature.

"We are vampires." The middle-aged one spoke. "My name is Max, and that young fellow is David, and your name is…"

"I-Isabelle."

"Surely your friends and family don't call you by a name as formal as that? What do you prefer to be called, Isabelle?" Max's gaze was strangely hypnotic, and Isabelle felt herself weaken at the knees slightly, before she answered while in a bit of a dream state.

"Izzy."

"Well then Izzy," Max beamed, "we welcome you to our humble abode." Izzy felt David's presence come closer behind her, until they were almost touching. Izzy tried to move forwards, but Max blocked her way.

"Are you going to kill me?" she whispered, thinking out loud. David let out a deep rumble of laughter, though not in a mocking way, more of a…

"My dear girl, of course not! We were planning on something much more…different. How would you like to live forever? To be forever young, never die or grow old. To be free to whatever you wish." Max finished.

"What are you?"

"Vampires, my dear, vampires. You don't deserve to waste away slowly with men who beat you, come with us."

Isabelle felt David press himself to her from behind and brush her hair behind her shoulder, exposing her neck, and part of her shoulder in her torn dress.

"Carry on, David. Don't struggle Izzy, please. It will be much easier on you if you just let yourself enjoy it, instead of dreading it. Becoming like us isn't as bad as you think. Not in the least."

Izzy tried to turn around and away from David, but he had grabbed her hands, and the more she struggled, the more stronger he became. Max smiled as he turned around and left her and David alone. David's fangs slowly brushed against her bare neck and shoulder, and Izzy had to fight to keep her knees from buckling, and to keep her trembling under control. David bit down hard into her flesh.

Izzy began to tremble as the blood flowed out of her neck and into David's mouth and a strange feeling swept through her from the wound to her toes. The deep red blood continued to flow from the wound, and it seemed to pour out after a while. Her whole body felt numb, except for a streak of pleasure going from her chest to her crotch. The more blood was lost, the wider the sense of bliss became throughout her, and stronger. Soon, David stopped, and the two stood there for a second.

Izzy heard a slight ripping sound, and felt David slowly turn her around. He had taken part of his shirt off to expose his ivory neck, with a thin line of blood slowly trickling down.

"You must drink it to become one of us." He spoke deeply to her, an intense look in his eyes, his face a vampire's face. Izzy found herself putting her arms on his shoulders and sinking her growing teeth into the cut in his neck. The green blood seeped down her throat, tasting better and better with every sip, and she felt like she was having a massive orgasm with every drop. She felt herself becoming stronger with every gulp, and her once weak body felt more re-vitalized. Then, she felt the room spinning and her body contracting with pain, then a seemingly eternal darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Izzy watched the boisterous crowd jostling themselves around the carnival hollowly. No emotion ran through her mind as she stood up from the bench and advanced towards a small group of young teenage girls standing around a whack-a-mole game station. Standing silently behind them for some time, she watched the rhythmic appearances and disappearances of the purple plastic mole, and one of the girls feebly trying to smash the violet creature on its head. She missed frequently. Izzy hated this part of what she had to do to survive. Their faces looked like hers when she tore their flesh away from their throats, skulls, and occasionally, depending on how deep her bloodlust was running, their chests. The girls seemed oblivious to her very presence until one of them glanced behind herself. She was probably around fourteen, but then again Izzy was appalling at guessing people's ages, so she could have been twelve or so or maybe fifteen, but it didn't really matter. It wouldn't matter once she shepherded them into a nice, quiet place. It wouldn't matter then, so it shouldn't matter now.

"Are you in line?" Izzy was politely questioned by the center girl who was holding the hammer limply at her side.

"No. I'm just watching." She replied equally politely, and then she could find herself second-guessing what she was about to do.

"Oh, well that's okay, we're done anyways." Another girl responded quickly, her eyes wide.

"So soon? You were just getting warmed up, here, try it again." Isabelle handed the girl in the center a dime and gestured for her to put it in the slot and continue on in her game.

"No, no it's okay you don't need to-"

"Please play. You were getting so good…."

The girl fidgeted and looked nervously at Isabelle, a look of deep unease in her eyes. She screwed up her face and turned around, slowly inserting the coin and attempting yet again to smash the plastic figures. Her hand was trembling as she slammed down the hammer over and over again. One of the girls was looking past her towards a Ferris wheel full of couples. Isabelle turned around casually to see the young girl look at a figure a little bit farther away from the wheel. David. David was watching them intensely, a small, sly smile upon his currently human features.

"Hey. Who are you watching?" Isabelle used a friendly and slightly teasing voice for the young girl, who turned pink and quickly looked away. "Are you looking at him?"

"At who?" the girl was pretending, and that was slightly tiresome.

"At him. That person near the wheel, that's who." Isabelle smiled.

"I don't see who you are talking about. I got to get going now, bye guys."

Isabelle caught the girl by the arm with a stronger than normal grip and pulled her gently back to where she was standing.

"He's gorgeous isn't he?" Isabelle was grinning now. David was watching them with the same smile she knew and hated so much, for he used it when being seductive with humans. "He's checking you out! Go up to him, don't let this opportunity slip away, go on, Go!"

"He's not checking me out. I'm much too young anyways; he's probably looking right behind us. I got to go."

"Talking to him won't kill you." Isabelle almost cried/laughed at her own statement, because talking to him or to her **would** get you killed.

"Oh Jamie, he **is** gorgeous! She's right, go talk to him, go talk to him!" one of the other girls squealed. The last girl had given up the Whack-a-mole game and was watching David as well, but the unsettled look was still quite evident.

The other girl shoved Jamie forwards and ushered her friend on as she walked to, unknowingly, her death. Isabelle watched as Jamie eventually reached David, just to make sure that she had gotten there without bolting suddenly.

"He is so gorgeous." The other girl kept on murmuring to herself excitedly. "He is so gorgeous."

Isabelle watched as David turned his attention from them to the girl in front of him.

"Come on. We'll check up on her later on, let's go eat something. I'm starving." Isabelle walked away into the dense crowd and gestured in a pleasant sense for the other girls to come too. They followed, one dreamily and the other in a state of high anxiety.

They stopped at a cotton candy vendor and Isabelle bought them each a cone of the sweet smelling chemically goodness. Having never had eating it, she didn't really feel as if she was missing out on the food, and the satisfied quiet emanating from the two girls who were happily eating the floss, well, at least one of them was, made her concentrate on other affairs entirely.

The two girls were following Isabelle away from the crowds and the carnival itself and onto the windy beach. Isabelle's hair was blown away from her face, which was currently smiling, but her eyes told a different story. Her eyes told of the starvation she felt, of the disgust and of the self-loathing she experienced. Of the burning desire to murder and drink the fresh corpses dry of all their blood. Of the glee she felt, and of the exhilaration of leading her prey to their deaths. They followed her across the rocky beach, so far that the carnival began to just be a speck of light in the distance.

"Where are we going?" the once-giddy girl asked Isabelle. Isabelle stopped walking and sat down on a rock.

"We're going here. It's just so beautiful here. Don't you think?"

"Um, I guess it is."

"It is." Isabelle said this much more forcefully than she had meant to. "Sit down, we'll only be here for a little bit. Rest before we head back."

Isabelle stood up when they sat down, and she stood facing them blankly. Her eyeteeth were burning with impatience, and her whole mouth was full of excited energy. There was no warning. One minute, the nervous girl was sitting on a rock, the next minute, she was on the ground screaming with terror and pain. Tears were streaming down Isabelle's pale face as she laughed and drank and became euphoric and horrified with it all. The other girl was screaming as well as she ran down the grassy side of the beach as fast as she could manage, but she was not her main focus of the night, the bleeding girl in her arms was. Nothing else existed except for the blood, and Isabelle.


	3. Chapter 3

Blood trickled down the corner of Isabelle's pallid mouth, the deep red contrasting against her skin in a dreadful way. She had drunk until the now dead girl underneath her was shriveling up in a grotesque matter that made even Isabelle, who was quite experienced after two hundred and three years of murder and bloodshed, feel slightly ill. Isabelle scornfully wiped her chin with an already bloodstained handkerchief, and gently slapped her wrist. Usually she was a clean eater but it seemed that tonight she had made a rather mess of her face. And she had to still catch that other girl… or maybe she'd let her run, screaming with horror, to the carnival. No one would believe what she saw really happened, but hours would pass, then days, and sooner or later, it would become apparent that her friend was indeed dead or hurt. Her parents would go mad with grief and fear for their daughter, but her body would never be found unless someone swam far enough into the ocean, then dived into it about ninety feet. Her body would rot with the fish, just like the ten others she and Michael had taken in the past month. Disposing of the bodies was the easy part; all they needed to do was fly over the ocean until they thought it was deep enough, then drop the stone-laden carcass into the blue abyss.

Over the years they had traveled all around the country, to Canada, and once, for five years, to Australia. The longest time they had ever stayed in one place was twenty years, and that was in Europe during WWI. The travel was necessary to survive and escape much suspicion. If there was much attachment to one particular place they would just come back several years later and stay there until they had their fill. It would have been lonely had it not been that they had each other for company, which changed everything. It changed the way they hunted, it changed where they went, and it changed how their prey reacted to them. What it didn't change, however, was the emotions. The emotions never seemed to leave either of them. If they were angry, they were angry for several years, if they were sad, they would be sad for several years. If they got cocky with their prey, they would be cocky for much too long. Isabelle couldn't say exactly if she missed human emotions, and part of her said that she didn't miss them one bit, but the other side screamed out that it missed it beyond belief. Unlike humans, Isabelle quickly found that love was not a passing emotion; that it stayed and stayed, even if she was in a rage, even if she felt dejected, even if she felt spiteful, so it stayed with her. She felt rather sorry for humans. Their emotions died out so quickly it was almost alarming. Nothing seemed to stay in their hearts for very long, it was all fleeting and fickle. Isabelle did not miss that aspect at all. She didn't miss food, she certainly did not miss menstruating, or urinating or defecating, she didn't miss the daylight, and she didn't miss the notion that she would someday die, she missed absolutely none of that. What she missed… she wasn't really sure of. There would be times where she found herself up half of the day musing over it all.

Isabelle abstractedly dragged the girl's body by the foot down the sandy beach, humming a tune she had heard once. But the tune kept on changing and the tempo would be off the charts one minute but the next it would return to normal. Isabelle hummed when she was remembering incidents, or accidents, or if she was brooding over something Max had said to them once, how there was something about the way he said it she didn't like. Isabelle kept on humming as she picked up large rocks and pulled fishing wire out of her pocket. She even continued to hum absent-mindedly as she tied to the body the heavy rocks. The tune changed yet again as she waved good-bye to the child sinking into the inky water. Isabelle lay down on the air above the water, looking at the moon above her and smiling with content. The moon helped her find her inner sanctuary and lock herself in it…for at least a little while, until reality set in and she sat back up. It was summer here and the sun rose early. Gliding over the water swiftly, she was only a blur to the human eye, but to other vampires or other members of the dead and undead, she was crystal clear. There were no other vampires in Santa Carlo, just Max, David, and herself. She preferred that to having to constantly watch her back whenever she hunted, with the chance that a newly formed vampire might just happen to attack her from behind and steal her kill. She didn't like to feel like a wolf over a deer. It was degrading.

The cave was barren at the time. So far they had only erected the Jim Morrison poster and dragged in the four-poster bed, otherwise, it needed furnishing, very badly. The bed was unnecessary. Neither of them could actually sleep in it, and hadn't been able to since they were turned. Whenever they lay down to sleep, as soon as they woke up they'd find themselves pressed against the ceiling. It was something to do with the carvings, with the wood, with-with- why kid herself, it was because it was symbolic to them of death. That was where they had spent their last night as humans. Their last night as innocents, their last night as mortals, with mortal emotions, with mortal predicaments. It was that one little keepsake that they couldn't bring themselves to burn or to leave behind, it was that one little bad habit of theirs. Like chewing your nails.

Santa Carlo made her feel lonely. Maybe it was the large amounts of humans swarming around and inside of the carnival, or maybe it was the beach landscape, with the dark and lonesome blackness all around it. Max would occasionally pop his head into the cave to check if they were still alive, if they hadn't for some reason tried to maul each other to death, but his visits were random and rare. He was a solitary vampire who disliked undead company but then would go and begin to crave it than tire of it. He was unpredictable in the highest sense. Isabelle trusted him as much as she trusted humans which she let alive. Not at all. Isabelle left the cave almost immediately after she landed softly on the barren rock ground. She felt anxious as well now. She couldn't go to the carnival after a kill, so that left all of the twelve stores she could go around in to find some stuff she could use to cover up the screamingly naked cave walls. So far, she had pocketed almost two hundred dollars in just one week. Humans were getting richer and richer by the century, or maybe they were just becoming more spoiled. Both, probably. There was that store with all the drug paraphernalia, she could always go to that… but at this time of night, she would probably have to walk around drugged humans just to get to the back of the store where they sold the things of REAL interest. Of the African masks, of the snarling gargoyles, and once, just once, she saw a pendant that, after two hundred and twenty years on this earth, made her jaw drop with its beauty. Of course, the next night it was gone, which was to be expected but it still made her disappointed.

After buying several masks, she calmly shoved her way out of the crowd of heroin junkies while diverting her eyes from them and their distant voices of annoyance. She was looking forward now to heading back to the cave. The humans had put her at a sense of ease towards the human race, and made her reaffirm the fact that she was their predator and they were her prey, and unsuspecting prey at that.

She was smiling again by the time she swooped into the cave entrance, but her smile flew from her lips as fast as she had just came.


	4. Chapter 4

What she saw broke her heart. It broke her black, twisted dead heart. She thought it would have been a normal night. But a good, normal night, with no death-changing surprises, no worries, just a normal night. But when she saw the girl in the cave, her night went black on her. The girl was a pretty young human, highly fashionable, and most likely had lots of little human friends back at the carnival. Where she should have been. With her friends. But she wasn't. She was in the cave with no other than David, and something told Isabelle that she wasn't going to like this girl. Assuming of course she didn't lose control suddenly and kill the girl. That seemed like a good idea. All she knew was that David was leading the girl by the hand to their sleeping quarters, talking to her softly. This was when Isabelle softly flew over and grabbed the human by the nape of the neck, and was about to snap it- snap it so quickly and so hard that the snap or the breaking bones and cords would echo throughout the cavern. Bloodlust was rising in her throat again, but she was full, but mutilation was amusing to her as well, it could quell it just as drinking would. She had just swung the girl over to the other side of the cavern when David roughly grabbed her other arm and yanked her towards the opposite side of the cave. Isabelle hissed in rage, feeling more animalistic and out of control by the minute. David gave her a sidelong look before gliding over to the unconscious form of the girl. Isabelle's eyes darted everywhere for something to mangle, anything other than the girl, that was. Her own arm was so bare in the dull light, so bare and so pale, but it wasn't pale after she had used her eyeteeth to tear away her own skin so that the muscle underneath was exposed as well as her tree green blood which accompanied the muscle, trailing down in a lovely way. Such a lovely way.

Her breathing became more laboured, and her animosity soon dissolved and was replaced by a sickening feeling throughout her stomach. Her abdomen lurched and all of the blood she'd ingested from that night spilled out of her mouth as she sank to her knees. Her own blood was poisonous to a certain degree. It made it hard to survive when there was no human prey around; because you couldn't drink from yourself, you lose all bloodlust and make a terrible mess of your clothes and floor.

"Who's this David?" Isabelle said in a psychotically calm whisper. She was covered in blood and feeling angrier than hell itself. Her mind was clear at the time, but it was slightly foggy with fury. Getting foggier by the minute too. She'd better hurry up or she would lose it again.

"This? Star."

"Don't fuck with me. Who is she? And why is she in the cave, with you, and with me?"

"I think we need to expand our roster."

Isabelle cocked her head to the side for a second before bursting into laughter. Why after so many years now, why at this moment?

"That's not why she's here, is it?"

"Maybe, maybe not."  
"Don't play games with me David….. I know what you're up to. I'm no fool."

The girl Star stirred slightly, but David and Isabelle didn't notice. They were staring intensely at each other, each thinking his and her own thoughts, not giving a damn at the moment about the girl.

"Izzy…."

"Let me kill her, because we can always find others, if that's what you want."

David was silent for a moment before answering.

"Don't be jealous, she's only a human."

"I'm going to kill her because she's only a human."

The girl opened her eyes, now rolling around in their sockets. Isabelle took a step forwards, and then another one, and then another one, until she was kneeling in front of the girl. David had not yet made a move to stop her or encourage her until she sank her fangs into the human's neck. David gripped Isabelle's shoulder with such intense strength that Isabelle pulled her fangs out and yelled at him before pulling it off of her.

"Fine then!" She snarled with rage. "Fine then! Take her into the back and fuck her! Fuck her like I know you were going to! I guess I've lost my appeal, after two hundred years, have I? I guess you're more in love with humanity than with me!" She screamed the last part at him and whizzed around, going over to the trunk of clothes she kept and picking it up, she began to storm out of the cavern.

"I'm still as madly in love with you as I was all that time ago." David said softly to her.

Isabelle stopped, was about to turn around and say something, but instead she turned around and threw the nearest thing she could find at his form. The glimpse of him that she saw looked sorrowful but she didn't care in the least. She was too hurt, to upset, and much too angry to even talk to him.

Dry sobs wracked Isabelle's body as she sat in the train compartment with the blinds shut. She didn't even know where she was going, the ticket had said Colorado or Conneticuit or something like that. The money part was easy to pay; she just used some of her previous victim's money. She had requested a lone compartment and paid extra for it, locking the door behind her and blocking the window with its blind. She had nothing to leak out of her eyes, all of her liquid was lying in the cave back in Santa Carlo. The train ride took over four hours, and by the time it arrived at its destination, it was early morning, and the sun had risen. The conductor knocked on her door to announce the train's arrival, but Isabelle shrunk into the corner, her whole body screaming at her to get away from the light.

"Are you okay ma'am?" he asked in a suspicious tone, suspicious of what she didn't know, because her kind's existence was paved over frequently.

"No-no I'm not okay. Please shut the door, the light hurts my eyes."

"You have a migraine, do you?" he asked with sympathy in his voice.

"No, no I don't, I have a sensitive skin condition. My skin has an allergic reaction to small amounts of sun exposure, I can't go out until it's dark again, sorry."

"Ma'am I'm going to have to ask you to please remove yourself from the compartment."

"Where is the train headed next?"

"Washington…. If you want I can see if I can have it arranged for you to travel on the train until nightfall. But it's going to cost you a lot of money…."

"That's okay, I'll do it."

She never really knew how she ended up in New York, but it didn't really matter to her as to how, but as to how she would find a suitable haunt for herself. So far she had turned her nose upon a sewer (anyone would really, unless you enjoyed rabid rats and feces as your company), an alley, and she finally settled herself in a factory in a rather grubby area. It was falling apart but there were numerous lofts and rooms in the upper levels which Isabelle fell in love with. The plethora of humans running around in the city was amazingly convenient, so whether it was a prostitute, a pimp, a homeless person, a tourist, it all was absolutely too easy.

"Hey babe, looking for a good time?"

Isabelle tried not to smile or to laugh at the drunk male in front of her. He was youngish, probably a street kid still, and rather good looking.

"Sure." Isabelle said rather laughingly at the boy. He smiled and almost fell on top of her while staggering towards her. "Come back to my place."

"I want to ...to..." He gulped with wide eyes at her. Isabelle laughed now as she grabbed his hand and lead the staggering form down the street, around the corner, past the other drunks and stoned homeless men and women, past the brothel, until they reached the factory. She picked him up and flew up and up until they were in one of her lofts she liked to use for feeding. He looked at her with an open mouth and then put his hand up her shirt.

"Whoa there tiger." She chided him gently while removing his hand from her breast. Taking off his shirt she kissed him on the mouth before she went to the cheek and then to his chest until she went to his stomach and licked upwards back to his neck. This was all part of the game she played. Humans were just food in the end, nothing more, well the odd one was something more, but this one was normal and full of blood. He pulled off her shirt, and as soon as it was off she kissed him on the neck before tearing out his vocal chords. It was a nice shirt she was wearing, and she didn't want it soiled. The flagrant sexuality he had shown her tore through her heart, and made her long again for David. It made her bring back those two hundred years of painful memories she was trying to erase in a matter of months.

It had only been about two months since she left David and her heart was still in grief. Memories of David kept on resurfacing as she tore out the boy's heart with her bare fingers and squeezed the organ above her mouth, the blood draining into her mouth and down her throat. After the boy was shriveled and unappealing to her, she slung his corpse over her back and propelled herself into the air. There were no bodies of water here, but there were dark alleys she knew of, alleys far far away on the other side of the city. She went as fast as she could to the alley she liked to use for disposing of her meal, and then zoomed back to her loft. She didn't know why she was bawling so hard, or why she wanted to get out of the factory so badly, but she did know that she was going to go back to Santa Carlo and finish things properly. But she was still going back to New York, no matter what.

The train jostled and bumped down the tracks in need of desperate repair. And Isabelle was lying peacefully on one bunk with a human underneath her talking to her occasionally.

"I do love the night time, don't you?" The human underneath her was going to visit her niece over in Santa Carlo.

"Yes, it is nice. Especially when you're in the country, all the stars are visible."

"What's your favourite constellation?"

"Hmmm… tough one. It would probably be-" Isabelle stopped as she felt a stomach convulsion take over her stomach. Pain ripped around her stomach's center and she fell off of the bunk and began to yelp occasionally in pain. Bright lights began to prickle her eyes, and she was coughing up her green blood all over the red carpet. The woman was bending over her yelling for help. Isabelle found herself gripping her stomach moaning with it all. The pain subsided slowly until she felt something lift from her body. Her whole body was shaking with an unknown feeling, and that of dread. When the train stopped at Santa Carlo, she automatically had a picture of a house in the outskirts. She didn't notice as she flew off the few people who saw her and pointed it out in awe to their fellow passengers. There was a feeling of foreboding all throughout her mind at what she almost dared not see, of what she hoped she was wrong about. The smallish house in her mind soon came in view, as a pinprick in the distance, but closer and closer, until she landed right in front of the front door. She ran over its shards until she came to the front room. A corpse of a fellow vampire lay there, she didn't recognize this one though, but she recognized the scent of her kind's dead. It was all over the house.

In her mind's eye she saw another room filled with antlers and dead animals. As she ran throughout the house and saw more and more vampire corpses she held back the nausea in her throat. She could also smell the humans around her, when she ran back from the upstairs floor she had flown up, she yelled in surprise. Max was lying on the floor, dead as a doornail. This, however, attracted the surprise of the humans who spun around to see what had just yelled. What she saw behind her froze her blood. David was impaled through the stomach with a deer's set of antlers. She pushed past the group who were already trying to attack her. Screaming in grief she rushed up to her lover's body. Her scream was unearthly, causing the humans to cover their ears in agony. This time she was sobbing, with blood pouring out of the corners of her eyes.

"I never got to say sorry, I never got to fix things! Oh my god, DAVID! Oh my god." Was all the humans could hear as she broke the antler off and pulled David's body off of it, clinging to the corpse. She was still trying to take it out of the house even as she felt the stake go through her back and into her heart. She dropped David's body and fell over, trying to get back up and pull his corpse up. She lay on the floor with her arm on his chest trying to get up but the pain in her chest was too much, she had to lie down. She knew Star had stabbed her. She had known Star would be the one killing the vampire, not the other way around.

"Only good thing you ever did for me." She croaked at Star before the darkness took hold, and a feeling of rest entered her.


End file.
